energyXT

EnergyXT is a great piece of DAW.

And I say that after working with it for 7 years and having tried many others and watched yt videos of almost every other DAW widely used. The functionality in terms of number of features can be discussed, there are definitely some missing that some consider essential and are common with most leading DAWs, but there are also some that eXT users use very much but are really unique to eXT, so unknown to others.

Probably the worst thing about eXT is its (public) reputation, or better, lack of it. Like, for example, this thread, the list of evaluations. The last eval here was written 10yrs+ ago. This is terrible! Not that it just seems nobody is using it, I know there are several users, but the last eval is about a dissapointment because the V2 is not an upgrade of V1. That could be called a marketing mistake from the designer but somebody should explain that here, or at least the author could call it for what it is. And unfortunately it seems that people loved V1 (I haven't tried it) and somehow got discontinued. However, the V2 evolved over time to V3 and now we have a decent and in some aspects a uniqely special DAW - IDEAL FOR AMATEURS with low budget - and not in any negative aspect of the word.

The GUI and usabilty are in most areas unmatchingly good. Of course this is felt only after you have used for a while. And then if for some reason you want to go somewhere else you just realize how valuable its usabilty is:

• Very clean interface ("less is more" logic) with all the functionality very easily accessible.
• Extremely low CPU usage - it literally works on any laptop or PC.
• Powerful and simple modular pane where you can combine more plugins in a visually clear manner.
• Small GUI elements (unfortunately not resizable) allow for very good use of monitor space (medium resolution monitors, laptops).
• Very simple, intuitive audio parts management (stretch, volume, tune, transpose, cut, split, glue, fade in-out, x-fade).
• powerful integrated drum sample player with:
  • unlimited sample pads (with inserts per each pad).
  • huge collection (30+) of sampled rhythm machines (Roland, Korg, Akai, Alesis ...) - from small to huge w. up to 180 drum sounds.
  • inserts and sends on each pad.
  • sampler playback functions (transp., filter, chop).
• strong PM synthesizer w. good sample player.
• quite some quality presets, samples and loops available on the product website.
• simple automation interface and support for automation recording from VST GUI.
• each track with integrated EQ.
• User friendly built-in theme editor, for nice colors and quite some custom themes available online.
• Complete set of customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• ...

I just tried to list some special features that are really well implemented and distinguish EnergyXT in the huge DAW world.